Everyday life, according to many traditional aesthetic values, is unremarkable; typically, the predictable ebbs and flows of ordinary existence—our routines and habits, our idle moments and mundane actions—possess artistic or literary value only insofar as they produce experiences of revelation or epiphany. However, often, one’s ability to transcend ordinariness is rooted in material conditions that render participation in everyday life easier for some people at the expense of others.

In this workshop, poets will attend to the ordinary for the sake of the ordinary, exploring the contours and contents of mundanity’s competing demands to generate work that remains “conscious of the connections between lived daily experience…and the oppressive economic and political conditions of our modern capitalist society.”[1] Using inspirations, prompts, and methods developed from the post-war avant-garde through to contemporary poetic practice, students will engage with work from the likes of Claudia Rankine, Harryette Mullen, Bernadette Mayer, Yoko Ono, Lisa Jarnot, Bhanu Kapil, CD Wright, and more, as they compose original writing grounded in everyday experience and resistant to the anti-political allure of transcendence.

[1] Epstein, Andrew. Attention Equals Life: The Pursuit of the Everyday in Contemporary Poetry and Culture. Oxford University Press, 2018.